![]() It took some time, but I eventually listened to Leonard Cohen’s original. The version in Shrek is less inflammatory, less obviously blasphemous, neutralized somewhat of the agnostic undertones. Knowing about unused stanzas fed into my hipster desire to be first among the initiated. Later, the existence of “Hallelujah” apocrypha intrigued me. I swore off Wainwright for the painful lore of Buckley’s death. ![]() His “Hallelujah” was gentle and tortured. I couldn’t understand the interplay between author and source material, couldn’t grasp that the narrator was seeing himself in holy texts, interjecting his own experience into the context of mythical figures and making them as human as he.įrom there I found Jeff Buckley’s Grace in my sister’s CD collection. ![]() But why was he tied to a kitchen chair? Did they even have kitchen chairs in the age of the Plishtim? I knew it was Dovid who saw Batsheva bathing on the roof I knew it was Delila who cut Shimshon’s hair. ![]() ![]() The lyrics were deceptively simple words, referencing biblical passages I recognized. I was a preteen and baffled that my grown siblings were interested in the soundtrack. My first “Hallelujah” was sung by Rufus Wainwright in Shrek. ![]()
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